Karlheinz Stockhausen was arguably the ultimate revolutionary musician of the 20th Century. Called “one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music" and “the father of electronic music" for introducing controlled chance (aleatory techniques) into serial composition, and for musical spatialisation. He composed 370 individual epic works, including totally bonkers operas where mysticism, astrology and technology are violently weaved with human voices. Stockhausen claimed he was mentally linked to the universal continuum via the ancient civilisation of Sirius.
He remarked at a press conference at a music festival in Hamburg six days after the 9/11 attacks made headlines that the destruction of the twin towers was
“the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos.”
Things went gone from bad to worse to incendiary when, like Batman’s Joker, he warmed to his theme:
“Minds achieving something in an act that we couldn’t even dream of in music, people rehearsing like mad for ten years, preparing fanatically for a concert, and then dying; just imagine what happened there. You have people who are that focused on a performance and then 5,000 people are dispatched to the afterlife, in a single moment. I couldn’t do that. By comparison, we composers are nothing.”
The Helikopter-Streichquartett is one of Stockhausen's best-known pieces, and one of the most complex to perform. It involves a string quartet, four helicopters with pilots, as well as audio and video equipment and technicians. It was first performed and recorded in 1995. Although performable as a self-sufficient piece, it also forms the third scene of the opera Mittwoch aus Licht.
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